4o8 A Description of Kuniaon, [Sess, 



beautiful, and at the same time the saddest, cry of any bird 

 on earth. Of all my remembrances of Kumaon, the wailing 

 cry of this bird is most deeply impressed on my memory. 



Last year I described the pheasants at sufficient length. Of 

 the partridges, two species are the most common. The first is 

 the black partridge {Francolinus mdgaris), which, according to 

 the ]\Iohammedans, says, " Subhan teri kudrut," meaning, 

 " Great is thy power " — supposed to be an address to the deity. 

 The other species is Caccabis chucor, allied to C. graeca. Both 

 these partridges are excellent eating, and are shot in great 

 numbers by hill sportsmen. There is also a tiny partridge, 

 the " peura " {Arhoricola torq%icola), which is also very good to 

 eat, though small. It is often captured in nets by the natives, 

 who imitate its whistling call. Of the lapwings, the red- 

 wattled lapwing {Lobivandhis goensis) is ubiquitous, and is 

 even more vociferous than the European lapwing. It appeared 

 to me to speak broad Aberdonian, saying, " Fat did he dee o' ? " 

 Curiously, a very different bird, Sibia capistrata, a Crateropod, 

 has to my ear a similar cry, but whispered, not shouted, and 

 quickly answered by its mate. It lives in the forest, not upon 

 the ground like the lapwing. The common snipe and the 

 painted snipe are well known as birds of passage. They make 

 a stay of a few days on their way up and down from Thibet, 

 especially the return journey. They are then shot in great 

 numbers ; but the snipe-shooting season is a short one. Geese 

 and ducks seldom stop in Kumaon, but make their way from 

 the plains to Thibet and back, without halting. A few are, 

 however, occasionally shot in the lakes and elsewhere. 



The characteristic bird of the Kumaon lakes is the bald- 

 coot {Fulica atra), which, according to my friend, Dr Walker, 

 author of a book on fishing in the Kumaon lakes, has a cry 

 exactly like the click of an angler's reel. This often surprises 

 a fisherman on the Kumaon lakes, who fancies he has the lake 

 all to himself, and who could not hear a more disagreeable 

 noise than the sound of another man's fishing-reel running out 

 at the rate of fifty miles an hour. 



Eegarding the people of Kumaon, I must now, in conclu- 

 sion, say something. As a whole they are inferior, physically 

 and morally, though not intellectually, to the people of Gurh- 



